The Growth Period
It was supposed to be a long-overdue day off.
I remembered sitting down in front of my computer with perfect clarity — and then I opened my eyes to find the entire village performing the Heavenly Demon Dominion Step right in front of me.
When a scene this far removed from reality unfolds before your eyes, the brain stops trying to interpret it and simply accepts what it sees.
How do I know that?
Because that was exactly what I was doing.
They looked like ordinary human beings, same as me — and yet they were soaring through the sky.
No. Not soaring. Leaping.
Ah. So this is a dream.
I took the scene before me at face value and left it at that.
Of course, even in a dream, the fear of being trampled to death was real enough — so I scrambled out of the way. Being stuck in a child's body had its advantages when it came to hiding.
Wait.
A child's body?
I frantically looked down and patted myself all over. Only then did it hit me.
My body was completely different.
Why am I so short? Did I turn into an elementary schooler? But what kind of elementary schooler has muscles like these… and why is my skin so pale?
Without a mirror, I couldn't check the details, but I could tell well enough that this body wasn't mine.
Definitely a dream, then.
The certainty brought a measure of calm.
Might as well look around.
Watching people casually crater the ground right in front of me still sent fear surging up, but once I settled my nerves, the sheer vividness of the dream became fascinating. Hiding until I woke up would have been a waste.
So I poked my head out of the alley.
And in that exact moment —
"Huh? A mutant."
A boy about my height, with a still-childish face, was pointing straight at me. At his words, every gaze in the area swung my way.
I'd heard that when dream figures realize you're dreaming, they stare at you — and that it's supposed to be terrifying.
Yeah. That's actually scary as hell.
The boy scooped up a chunk of shattered stone from the wrecked pavement and, without a second's hesitation, hurled it at me.
If that hits, I'm dead.
The thought had barely formed when —
Thud.
The rock slammed into my gut. I never even saw it coming. He threw it, and it hit. Everything in between simply didn't exist.
"Ghk—"
My breath locked up. Pain flooded in — but contrary to my fear that my abdomen would simply burst open and kill me, it just hurt. A lot. The stone shattered against my body into fragments.
"Hey, why the hell are you throwing rocks? Giving him a massage?"
"I dunno. It was the only thing in my hand."
That was the moment I realized this wasn't a dream — and that my body wasn't normal, either.
In this village, they called me a mutant.
My name was Bell.
I had no parents. No home. Friends, of course, were out of the question.
These people were descendants of the Giant race, once regarded as demigods — something I learned from watching them offer prayers every morning before a colossal stone statue carved in a giant's likeness. It was more faith than fact, so whether it was true was anyone's guess. But it was more than enough reason to fully accept that this was a world of monsters wearing human skins.
It felt a bit like a game world where brains had been nerfed into the ground and bodies buffed past all reason. Not that I'd ever played a game like that.
Well. Maybe nature around here had simply weeded out every creature with a functioning brain.
Apparently, no one had anticipated that a single footstep would sink the earth, or that one punch would erase a massive tree without a trace. I accepted it. There was no other option.
…If these monsters were ever unleashed on the wider world, nature itself wouldn't survive.
Then again, who knew. There must have been some kind of miscalculation. The fact that they'd already been set loose and the world still hadn't ended suggested this place ran on principles I couldn't begin to grasp. Trying to understand them would only wreck my own brain, so I simply accepted it.
By that measure, I really was a mutant.
Of course, the me of this place had been born to an ordinary couple. That was what the village's favorite gossiping old man told me one day as I wandered the streets. My parents had died not long after I was born, and from then on I'd been called a cursed child. My mother had always been unusually frail, and she'd died giving birth to me. My father followed her soon after. My strength was far weaker than any of my peers, and at some point they started calling me a mutant.
Naturally, no one welcomed me.
But that didn't mean I could leave the village, either. More precisely — they never drove me out. Beyond the village lay the Forbidden Zone, and that was why.
I eventually learned that the village where I'd opened my eyes was desperately impoverished compared to anywhere else. An Abandoned Village, where the destitute had been pushed to live. Then again, when every footfall cracked the ground, maybe that was inevitable.
Unable to cast me into the Forbidden Zone, the villagers neither fully rejected me nor accepted me. They simply treated me like a stranger and left me alone.
And that stirred something I'd buried deep.
Memories of a past life — losing my parents young, being looked down on for being poor, growing up alone. The misery that had driven me to cling to studying with everything I had. I'd gotten into a prestigious university, built something resembling friendships, landed a job, lived ordinary days, and thought I'd overcome it all. But the loneliness carved into my bones had never been conquered.
No — not bones. My body had changed. It was loneliness carved into my soul.
Those cold stares poured oil on an unnameable ember that had long gone quiet inside me.
I clenched my teeth once more.
In a society that refused to welcome me, I would climb to a position of respect.
From that day on, I trained my body with ruthless determination. If my past life had been devoted to studying, this one would be devoted to strength.
Strangely, hunger never hit me hard. I could go three days without eating and still be fine. Once I did eat, the food vanished without end — but filling up just enough was never a real problem. I scavenged whatever I could find on the streets or in the nearby mountains. Worries about dirt only lasted the first few times; once I ate, digestion worked with terrifying efficiency. Fuel-efficient body.
I trained every single day, building myself up, throwing punches into empty air for the first time in my life, preparing for a fight. The dismissive looks from everyone around me were familiar. I knew better than anyone how those looks would change later.
After a year of disciplined training and endless, seemingly pointless punching, I came to a conclusion.
I need real combat.
No matter how many simulations I ran in my head, there was a limit. What mattered was the real thing. Growth happened in actual fights.
A year in, I picked a fight with one of the kids who'd always looked down on me. Ger — the same brat who'd thrown a rock at me on my first day in this place.
I got beaten half to death.
Imagination really was just imagination. No amount of mental preparation could overcome a body that was simply too weak. And he already looked comfortable in a fight. The most traditional pastime around here was bare-knuckle brawling, so of course he was.
The one advantage I could find was that he moved like someone who never thought at all — simple, telegraphed. I, at least, could use my head. Though even that head of mine was hopelessly outmatched by raw physical talent.
I got thrashed within an inch of my life. But I didn't die.
After losing to Ger, I spent a full week replaying nothing but that fight. Then I challenged him again.
I lost again.
But I learned that Ger was weak against sudden, unexpected situations — and that when he panicked, he habitually threw a right punch.
Another week.
This time I anticipated the right and landed a counter twice.
I still lost. Two counters weren't enough to put that body down. Meanwhile, two clean hits left me seeing stars.
I need to get stronger.
I buried myself in the mountains for three months. In my head, I reviewed every exchange with Ger. With my body, I trained without mercy. Then I showed up in front of him again.
"I'm getting tired of playing with a little beggar."
"Scared?"
"You little shit—"
Around here, asking someone if they were scared was a worse provocation than any insult aimed at their mother. One word like that and you could pick a fight even with the gentle-faced old man who always walked around with his hands behind his back.
Nothing improved you faster than building an error notebook out of real combat.
I fought him nearly even. I kept my distance, forced variables into the fight, and every time he threw that right, I was waiting for it. It was doable.
But at the end, I couldn't stop the frenzied charge he unleashed, and I lost.
By this point, most people would have started fearing another loss. Ger, on the other hand, seemed to be enjoying himself.
"Come find me again in a week. You've got me interested. I want to see the look on your face when you get crushed under my foot after all that hard work."
After that, Ger started training hard too. When I showed up a week later, the meaningless right-hand habit he'd always thrown was gone. That made him harder to deal with.
But I'd already decided I couldn't win by hunting that habit alone. Even if I drained his stamina that way, if I couldn't stop the final berserk rush, I'd lose anyway.
From here on, the only answer was a straight-up fight.
I got demolished.
"How's it feel?"
Was the gap in talent truly something you could never cross?
"I'll remember those words."
No. I already knew it wasn't.
"I'll throw them right back at you someday."
From then on, I challenged him every single week without fail.
Loss. Loss. Loss. Loss. Loss.
Five defeats.
If you gave up at the bottom of the pit, the only path left was becoming a permanent loser. So I didn't give up.
And so a year passed.
"Hah… hah — the mutant brat's gotten pretty big, huh?"
In front of me stood Ger, hands on his knees, gasping for air. His body had grown on a completely different scale from a year ago.
So had mine.
I kept my back straight and looked down at the wheezing Ger.
"Want more?"
"A little early for that line, don't you think?"
With those words, Ger suddenly lunged.
A right punch.
His stamina at its limit, the old habit he'd corrected was surfacing again.
I tilted my head, slipped past the fist, and drove my own punch straight through.
Crack.
My fist landed clean on Ger's face. His body lifted off the ground, flew a long way, and smashed into a wall. The stone crumbled in a cascade.
No one was inside — but it was the house of a man famous for his foul temper. If we got caught, we'd be beaten unconscious for sure.
"Still. Gotta do what needs doing."
I walked over to Ger and set my foot on his face.
"How's it feel?"
There was no answer.